Glenmorangie Companta

Every year Glenmorangie releases a ‘private edition’, an annual limited release, usually with no age statement, but they are regarded as being quite good. This particular one if from 2014 and was matured in Grand Cru Burgundy & Côtes du Rhône Casks.

I mentioned the importance of wine casks in some other posts as sherry is becoming less and less popular and thus so are good quality sherry casks. So understanding the possibilities of wine casks is important.

Dr. Bill Lumsden, the master distiller at Glenmorangie has quite an obsession with cask types and really likes to muck about with all sorts of wood from a wide range of sources and is quite at the forefront of testing the effects of various wine casks on whisky maturation. These private editions are the results. This was matured in a mix of dry and fortified sweet red wines.

I liked this quite a lot. The nose somewhat reminded me of a good sherry matured whisky, but somewhat spicier and fruitier. It wasn’t offensively young either, there was definitely some good quality stuff in here and really shows the potential for wine casks in whisky maturation when done properly.